自从上世纪80年代以来，夏威夷蜜雀（如上图）便一直被认为派生于澳大利亚或南太平洋的一种类似鸟类。它们在外观、行为以及生活方式上都非常相似。即便它们的叫声都很像。然而对博物馆标本进行的DNA分析却显示，生活在夏威夷岛上的5种蜜雀与生活在北半球温带地区的蜡翅鸟，以及生活在中美洲和南美洲的霸鹟在亲缘关系上更为接近。
据美国《科学》杂志在线新闻报道，它们的祖先很可能在1500万年前从中南美洲来到夏威夷，这一时间比生活在夏威夷的其他鸟类早了数百万年的时间。研究人员在《当代生物学》网络版上报告了这一发现。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Current Biology，Volume 18, Issue 24, 1927-1931，Robert C. Fleischer，Storrs L. Olson
Convergent Evolution of Hawaiian and Australo-Pacific Honeyeaters from Distant Songbird Ancestors
Robert C. Fleischer1,2,,,Helen F. James2andStorrs L. Olson2
1 Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20008, USA
2 Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA
The Hawaiian honeyeaters, five endemic species of recently extinct, nectar-feeding songbirds in the genera Moho and Chaetoptila, looked and acted like Australasian honeyeaters (Meliphagidae), and no taxonomist since their discovery on James Cook's third voyage has classified them as anything else [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. We obtained DNA sequences from museum specimens of Moho and Chaetoptila collected in Hawaii 115158 years ago. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences supports monophyly of the two Hawaiian genera but, surprisingly, reveals that neither taxon is a meliphagid honeyeater, nor even in the same part of the songbird radiation as meliphagids. Instead, the Hawaiian species are divergent members of a passeridan group that includes deceptively dissimilar families of songbirds (Holarctic waxwings, neotropical silky flycatchers, and palm chats). Here we designate them as a new family, the Mohoidae. A nuclear-DNA rate calibration [9] suggests that mohoids diverged from their closest living ancestor 1417 mya, coincident with the estimated earliest arrival in Hawaii of a bird-pollinated plant lineage [10]. Convergent evolution, the evolution of similar traits in distantly related taxa because of common selective pressures, is illustrated well by nectar-feeding birds [11], but the morphological, behavioral, and ecological similarity of the mohoids to the Australasian honeyeaters makes them a particularly striking example of the phenomenon.
